To get started quickly: For many platforms such as
Windows, Linux, open source BSDs, and Mac OS X, recent versions
of XEmacs are included in various distributions. Commercial Unix
versions may also have precompiled binary distributions.

Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP, Vista

The Cygwin
distribution provides a Unix emulation environment, and
a setup tool which you can use to select and download XEmacs
itself, various add-on packages for XEmacs, and binary
utilities such as aspell and its dictionaries and the patch
and diff utilities. (Windows Vista is not heavily tested
yet, but it should work.)

Mac OS X

The Fink and
MacPorts projects both
provide XEmacs packages, as well as the third party utilities.

All of the major Linux vendors provide XEmacs packages, often
in various configurations. Use the usual tool for your distro
to select, download, and install XEmacs.

Commercial Unixes

The Solaris Open Source Companion Disk contains a package of
XEmacs. The HP/UX Porting Center provides a distribution of
XEmacs, too.

You can also use the precompiled executables that can be found in
the binaries directory in the mirrors below.
However, many facilities provided by XEmacs require other binaries
(eg, the patch and diff utilities, or ispell and its dictionaries)
and you will have to get them yourself.
Binaries are made by volunteers, so they are not available for all
supported platforms.

For UNIX: Oldish binaries for XEmacs 21.1.3 are available
for Linux, Solaris, AIX, Irix, FreeBSD, NetBSD, HP/UX, and DEC
OSF. Binaries for some version of XEmacs 21.4 are available for a
few platforms. (21.4 was just promoted into the stable version, and
21.1 retired.) However, it is normally quite easy, and much
preferable, to download the sources and build XEmacs
yourself on any of the vast number of supported platforms -- a
sophisticated auto-configuring script is provided to simplify the
process.

Here are some tips for manual navigation through the XEmacs
download area:

The latest stable release can be found in directory
current in the mirrors below.

The latest stable release candidate (``gamma'') can be found in
directory gamma in the mirrors below. These
releases are quite stable, as far as we know, and get more so
with each release.

The latest developmental branch release can be found in
directory beta in the mirrors below. Be
warned, beta releases can be unstable.

The latest official xemacs package rleases can be found in
directory packages in the mirrors below.

The latest xemacs pre-release packages can be found in directory
beta/experimental/packages in the mirrors
below. Be warned, pre-release packages can be unstable as they
serve the purpose of initial testing and fast distribution of
suggested fixes.